Evaluating English Oral Communication Skills Instruction in Cambodian Upper-Secondary Schools

The purpose of the study was aimed at evaluating: (1) the process of the oral communication skills instruction, including teacher’s behaviors, teacher’s personal characteristics, class interaction, and teaching materials; and (2) the output of student learning, involving listening and speaking skills. There were 80 participants who involved in the study, namely 3 teachers of English in Grade-12, 3 English teacher’s colleagues, and 74 Grade-12 students. The data were collected through questionnaire, observation, interview, and testing. Mixed method was applied to the study. The quantitative data were analyzed descriptively with the support of SPSS 16.0 for Windows. Triangulation was employed to data analysis and finding discussion. The validity of content, construct, criterion, and expert was incorporated into the study. Items of the research instrument were selected based on the minimal value of discrimination index of 0.3 in terms of the Pearson Product Moment correlation coefficient. The reliability of the instrument was examined by means of coefficient Cronbach’s alpha. The four-scale evaluation criteria, including very low, low, high, and very high was applied. The findings of the study indicate that the teacher’s behaviors are assessed as low; the teacher’s personal characteristics are evaluated as high; the class interaction is evaluated as low; and the teaching materials are assessed as very low. Thus, the result of the process of learning and teaching the oral communication skills is evaluated as low. Besides, the testing result displays that students’ listening ability was low since there were 12 students who got very high scores; 23 students who achieved high scores; 31 students who obtained low scores; and 8 persons who reached very low scores out of 74 persons. Similarly, students’ speaking ability is assessed as very low, as out of 74 persons there were 13 students who reached very high scores; 13 persons who got high scores; 21 persons who achieved low scores; and 27 students who obtained very low scores. Therefore, students’ oral communication competence is evaluated as very low. Briefly, the process is evaluated as low, and the output is evaluated as very low